What Is Cat6 Cable Length

In order to run 10gbase t for 100 meters category 6a cable or augmented category 6 cables need to be used.

What is cat6 cable length.

Cat6a cables allow performance up to 500 mhz. When these factors impact distance a cable often has to be length de rated in order to maintain performance levels. The bottom line is this. For example a 25 ft unshielded cat6 cable goes for 8 on amazon while a 25 ft shielded cat6a goes for 11.

Also cat6 cable can reach 10 gigabit ethernet speeds by reducing the length to less than 50 meters. This paper focuses on the cat6 cable and offers an all round interpretation of the cat6 ethernet cable and its usage. If you cannot afford both of them and then cat5e would also be a good choice for 10g network. It s theoretical top speed is 10 gbps over 100 meters.

Both cat5e and cat6 cable specifications allow lengths up to 100 meters but cat6e has a lower max length 55 meters when used for 10gbase t 10 gigabit ethernet. The cost differences between cat6 and cat6a cables are relatively small around 20 35. After introducing cat6 icc made enhancements and produced cat6e. Cat6 short for category 6 is an ethernet cable standard defined by the electronic industries association eia and telecommunications industry association tia.

The tighter specifications guaranteed that 100 meter runs using cat6 cable is capable of 1000 mbit s transfer speeds. Cat6a 10gbase t cable using rj45 connectors can deliver 10g performance of higher frequencies 500 mhz and with longer link lengths 100 m than that of cat6 cable 250 mhz 55 m. What is cat6 cable. The maximum cabling length of cat6 network cable is 100m with 1 gbps while cat7 of 100 m with 10 gbps.

The category 6 augmented cable standard or cat 6a was created to further improve the performance of cat 6 ethernet cables using cat 6a enables 10 gigabit ethernet data rates over a single cable run up to 328 feet. Only when a cable is designed and manufactured to fulfill the full 100 m reach will it be able to do so. The cable standard specifies performance of up to 250 mhz compared to 100 mhz for cat 5 and cat 5e. Category 6 cable cat 6 is a standardized twisted pair cable for ethernet and other network physical layers that is backward compatible with the category 5 5e and category 3 cable standards.

Cat 6 has to meet more stringent specifications for crosstalk and system noise than cat 5 and cat 5e. Cat 6 supports 10 gigabit ethernet only up to 164 feet of cable length. The cost is about 20 35 higher than cat6 but the maximum cable length is 100 meters across all systems and conditions for gigabit ethernet. As for cable price of cat6 vs cat7 cat7 cable is more expensive than cat6 cable if they are compared under the same conditions.

Obviously 10gbe cat6a cable has better network performance than 10gbe cat6 cable.